Blocking a contact so they can't book

    Stop an email address or phone number being used to book with you, and know exactly what a block leaves running.

    4 min read

    When you have decided somebody is no longer a customer

    Someone has been asked not to come back and has booked again anyway. Or a parent's behaviour has ended the relationship and you would rather not depend on whoever is on reception recognising the name. A block is what stops the booking going through.

    It works on contact details, not on people. An email address and a phone number can be blocked; a name cannot. Someone who returns with a new email address and a new phone number is a new contact as far as Bookingo is concerned. Block both details where you hold both, because blocking one leaves the other route open.

    The accounts page with tabs reading Active, six, and Blocked, zero, above the list of families
    Blocking moves a family to the second tab. Nothing is deleted, and you can look at the list any time.

    What you need to add one

    Bookingo records who added the block and when, so you do not need to write that into the note yourself. Phone numbers are matched leniently: a number blocked with its country code still matches the same number entered without one.

    • An email address, a phone number, or both. Either on its own is enough to save the block.
    • A note saying why. It is optional. Without it, the next person to read the list has no idea what happened.
    The Active and Blocked tabs outlined
    Blocking moves a family between these two tabs.

    Everyone sharing those details is blocked

    Before you confirm, Bookingo looks the details up and lists every family using them, with the number of children on each and how many upcoming bookings they hold. Every family on that list is blocked, not only the first one.

    Read the list rather than clicking past it. Two households sharing one mobile number happens more than you would expect, and blocking that number takes both out. The block also covers your whole business rather than the location you happen to be working in, which is worth knowing if you run more than one site — see Running multiple locations.

    The status dropdown on a family profile outlined
    The switch itself is on their profile.

    Blocking cancels nothing

    This is the part that catches people out. The family disappears from the booking side of things while still occupying places in your sessions, and the gap only surfaces when somebody else cannot get in. If you are blocking a family mid-term, deal with their bookings in the same sitting.

    The status column on the accounts list outlined
    And shows in the list afterwards.

    What the family experiences

    The family's record is marked as blocked, and anyone signed in to the parent app is signed out there and then. The account holder is told their account has been blocked, and your staff are notified too, so nobody has to work out why a family has gone quiet.

    From then on, any booking attempt using that email address or phone number is refused with a message telling them to contact the centre. The refusal does not care who is doing the booking. Your own staff cannot book them back in from the admin side, and the same details cannot be used to start a fresh family record.

    The linked accounts panel outlined
    Check for linked adults — blocking one does not block the other.

    Unblocking

    Take the entry off the blocklist and every family it caught becomes active again. Children, past bookings and history are all still there — nothing was deleted to begin with.

    One thing to watch: unblocking sets those families to active whether or not they were active beforehand. A family that was already inactive when you blocked them comes back active, so check them afterwards if that matters.

    While the block stands you cannot make the family active from their own record. The blocklist entry is what controls it, and Bookingo will tell you so if you try. Remove the block first, then make whatever change you need on the family.

    More on families and children

    Adding a family without creating a duplicate

    What to put on a family record when you add one yourself, and what Bookingo does when the email address or phone number already belongs to someone.

    Giving two households access to the same child

    Link two family records so both adults can book for the same child, without the child existing twice and taking two places.

    Participants and family accounts

    How children and families are structured, what parents can do themselves, and how to avoid duplicate records.